An Efficient Airline Re-Fleeting Model for the Incremental Modification of Planned Fleet Assignments
Ahmad I. Jarrah,
Jon Goodstein and
Ram Narasimhan
Additional contact information
Ahmad I. Jarrah: Transport Dynamics, Inc., Princeton, New Jersey 08540
Jon Goodstein: United Airlines, Corporate Research and Development, WHQKB, 1200 E. Algonquin Rd., Elk Grove, Illinois 60007
Ram Narasimhan: United Airlines, Corporate Research and Development, WHQKB, 1200 E. Algonquin Rd., Elk Grove, Illinois 60007
Transportation Science, 2000, vol. 34, issue 4, 349-363
Abstract:
Airlines typically manage their annual business cycle by subdividing the year into a sequence of scheduling periods that span about a month each. Fleet assignment represents an important step in the planning process for each new scheduling period and is usually undertaken using computer-based optimization models. Once an initial fleet assignment solution is achieved and before “freezing” the assignments, planners spend significant effort in analyzing, modifying, and committing the individual components of the solution throughout the flight network. This manual step results in local modifications to the initial solution, and is necessary to reflect business judgment calls that cannot be captured by the optimization model. In addition, planners find it imperative to modify the initial fleet assignment solution to react to inevitable changes to the planning environment related to the planned schedule, demand forecast, number of available aircraft, crew staffing levels, and a host of other scheduling constraints. The above-described process of incrementally fine-tuning and modifying the initial fleet assignment solution is referred to as re-fleeting. It is characterized by (1) the requirement of quick solution time to allow frequent re-fleeting exercises, (2) the need for multiple alternative high-quality solutions to choose from, and (3) the constraint that the new solution differs from the prior one in a controlled and limited fashion. We demonstrate in this paper that global fleet assignment model formulations can be used to address the re-fleeting problem in an effective fashion.
Date: 2000
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)
Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/trsc.34.4.349.12324 (application/pdf)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:34:y:2000:i:4:p:349-363
Access Statistics for this article
More articles in Transportation Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().